steal my resources, huh?

[D4everman]

Is there any way to keep the AI from building those sea bases right off of your own coast (with the obvious intent of pilfering resources from your terraformed squares?)

Does the AI do this to goad the human player into a fight or is it just that it sees resources and thinks thats a good place to build a base? In my experience, Diedre is the worst offender. She always does this to me even when her faction is located on the other side of Planet. Miriam did it to me once, though, and Sven has also. (Recently even Santiago did it!) Cha Dawn did it last night and ruined my Noble rep. He refused to give up the base so I just destroyed it. I'm no longer going to "put up with it", my new SOP on the subject is "either give me the base or I'm going to take it and blast you off of the Planet.". I hate that! Not only did Cha's sea base influence some farmed and mined tiles of mine, they took up a few sea squares that I had sea formed for my own sea base!

Aw well, at least its not as bad as Civ2 when a rival nation would stroll intoyour midst with a settler and plop down a city in the middle of your empire!

D4:

[Earwicker]

The best way to prevent the AI plopping down sea-bases and stealing your forming is to ring your mainland with seabases yourself. The have nice broad radii of control to limit intrusion. They also serve as early warning system against invasion.

That's why I find Sven the most annoying -- he can usurp your territory long before you have Doct:Flex.

[death_head]

Which is why you should play with Sven...or declare war and take the bases for yourself.

[Avenoct]

Remember too that you can use a probe foil to start a war with the offender, or just outright steal the base. Keep an attackfoil or cruiser handy and after starting the war with Noble reputation, blow the base out of the water.

[Sprayber]

When you get them, IODs are great. As Yang I just got rid of my pacts(Zaks) Seabase without so much as a wimper. He was a submissive.

edit. You have to move them up next to the base and then release them into the wild. And brother do they go wild.

[Earwicker]

Yes, indeed the wild-worm strategy is good for territory control in general. I had a submissive Zak trying to expand into some prime territory -- several specials and the Manifold Nexus. It was several turns away by land, and my colony pods were on their way but lagging behind three of his. What I did have in the area was plenty of captured worms. I kept them nearby, and whenever he founded a base, I'd release one worm. No base, my land.

death head: I do like playing as Sven but not all the time. And early in the game I don't want a vendetta with him, even though I know one is coming before too long. Building up a lot of ships to attack bases and defend my holdings is usually not a production detour I want to take. Oftentimes he will offer me a pact against Lal or Yang, which I will accept to buy myself some time -- especially if I haven't seen the new adversary yet.

[death_head]

Unfortunately, the wild-worm strategy doesn't seem to work very well against Sven, because he kills it right away...

[bobyk464]

I've seen the opposite effect happen, where I'll have sea bases next to a coast and someone will build a land base that takes production away from me. I find that when a rival bulds a land base, even at a location a number of squares inland and well out of range of my sea bases, that the rival's territory expands to the maximum distance allowed on the landmass. The sea bases exert no territorial influence on land - their production radii are ingnored, and many, if not all, of their land squares now belong to the rival's territory. Sea squares are unaffected. Rather curious, that a single newly-founded size 1 base can steal territory from a number of developed sea bases in this way.

And, BTW, what are the rules of territory concerning land bases built close to each other and sea bases built close to each other? Is it "last come, first served?" or perhaps something more complex? And is there any way to take production back, as in Civ?

[Earwicker]

The "staking a claim" to LAND by a land base is unaffected by nearby seabases. A new land base will push your faction's border as if the seabase wan't there. So this completely blocks out utilization of land squares by that seabase. The only way to counteract that is to get a base onto the continent and push back the borders normally.

An excellent strategy to cripple Sven, who can take a long time to plop down his first land base, is to sneak in with one of your own. The sea-base radii for some reason don't consider the dry land part of their territory (thus no diplomatic repercussions), and suddenly his land squares offer him no production. Especially good if he's feeding off the monsoon jungle as he so often is.

[death_head]

On the note of sea bases claiming land, I htink that if you surround an island with sea bases, the island should become yours if nobody is on it.

[RedFred]

Originally posted by bobyk464
And, BTW, what are the rules of territory concerning land bases built close to each other and sea bases built close to each other? Is it "last come, first served?" or perhaps something more complex? And is there any way to take production back, as in Civ?

Last come, first served, indeed. You always get the better of the deal as far as resources in the overlap area if you build second. You cannot directly take production back by parking a unit on the square you hope to regain as with Civ. But if you have crawlered resources on a tile before the enemy city is founded, you will continue to get them afterwards even if it is now greyed out in your city screen.

Nothing to stop you from poaching resources from any unused tile from another faction with crawlers. This feature is particularly useful for exploiting resources from the territory of a submissive pactmate.

[death_head]

Although, keep in mind that unless you have a pact with them, they will probably object to your units molesting their territory.

[Avenoct]

I've never had a problem with crawlers that were already there ticking off a new neighbor. The AI seems to ignore them. But that's too close for me anyways...I'll probe them, kill them, whatever I have to not to be THAT close.

Incidentally, b/c the seabase territory thing I'll often use a sea colony pod to get 'off-island' in an island game and park it just next to a nearby island, going to work. Next up would be a transport with a former and garrison unit. The garrison and transport stay in the base, the former raises the land, making the base a land base...then it proceeds to terraform as usual, hopefully reconnecting to the 'homeland' with land bridges eventually. I like this strategy b/c the new base gets the equivalent of a rec. tanks. for production and the transport can serve as amphibious ability for new formers build at the base...until it becomes a land base. It's a lot more mineral intensive than just sending a land colony pod over, but once you have the production to afford this strategy it helps to preserve your turf (except for other factions sea-colonies! irony).

-Smack

[moomin]

I used to complain about the lack of sea borders before as well. I mostly play builder and it made it very difficult to keep a noble reputation - or else very expensive with the isles of deep.

I've now taken to playing without sea colony bases at all - not only don't I have any border problems, but the AI is notably better at building up it's land holdings when it can't spend all its resources toward useless size-2 sea bases. Two benefits for the price of one!

[Hoek]

The best thing to do in that situation is to just swipe the good resources from the pirate areas...there was this one time that my ally kept on trying to put up sea bases in sea squares very close to my territory, and it kept trying to take my resources so I had to swipe it in the name of another civilization